Easy Faith, Difficult Faith, Integrative Faith

10 Pentecost, Cp15, August 14, 2022
Jeremiah 23:23-29  Psalm 82
Hebrews 12:1 – 14  Luke 12:49-56

Lectionary Link

It is rather easy to be persuaded about the goodness of God, the reality of God, the love of God, and the goodness of the world, when we are living free, healthy lives with pollyannish naivete.

We're lucky if we get sheltered from any harshness in life such that in living lives completely exempt of hardship, we gleefully and confidently express our confident persuasion about the God whom we call good, loving, and all powerful, and about the goodness of our lives.

And I do wish people as much pollyannish naivete in wonderful childlike world shielded by goodness.   I'm all for the conditions which make faith in God and in each other easy.

But......that kind of easy faith is not a faith that has built muscles.  And it is the kind of faith that does not give one the kind of experience to have actual empathy with other people who have not always had such fortune in lives.

In the free world on the field of competition among all the free agents of creation, it would seem that most people come to some kind of experience of disharmony; times when things don't seem to fit together.

This was the case for the Lucan community hearing the sermons of their leaders about their situations.   What were their situations?    Family discord.   Person fighting over religion.  Stay with the ritually pure synagogue where families members lodged or follow those who saw a different path in the way of Jesus Christ.  Or for a Gentile family in the Roman Empire?  Should I follow my family in the temple ritual for our preferred gods and goddesses and should I participate in the civil religious cult of the divinized Emperor who called not only for civic loyalty but also cultic loyalty?

Easy faith does not work in times of conflict.   Easy faith is based upon the accidental innocence found in life situations shielded from conflict.

If it seems like the biblical record is more about difficult and heroic faith rather an easy faith, it is because biblical faith is true to the reality of the free conditions of what can actually happen.

And rather than say easy faith, difficult faith, or heroic faith, the faith inspired by the witness of Christ might be called an integrative faith.  What would that be?  It would be the ability to adjust our persuaded lives to the specific conditions which face us at anytime in our lives.

And those conditions are wide and varied and differ according to the situations of people, groups, and nations.

But what can one strive for in having this integrative faith?  One should strive to have a seeming alchemical faith, namely, the ability to transform the mean, the harsh, the ordinary, the base, or the whatever into persuaded actions and words of hope for betterment.

And what would the betterment outcomes of faith be?  empathy, compassion, fortitude, resilence, love and justice.

The event of faith is the ability to transform the stuff of life into better stuff of life for all people.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to integrating transforming faith for all the stuff of our lives to be given a presentation as better stuff for the life of this world.  Amen.